RURAL REMOTE LEARNING IN MANITOBA DURING COVID-19:
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF ACTION RESEARCH
Cathryn A. Smith Brandon University Gustavo Moura Brandon University
ABSTRACT
In September of 2020, seven school divisions in Western Manitoba developed a remote learning program to support medically fragile families whose children could not return to classrooms. The coalition of these school divisions, known as the Westman Consortia Partnership (WCP), needed to investigate what beliefs, practices, and strategies were critical to this new rural remote learning program, hence the collaboration with researchers to answer that question. From action research perspectives, this paper unpacks opportunities and challenges researchers faced in pre-, peri-, and post- research contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper explores action research aspects that were both followed and disrupted given the social, cultural, and historical context of the participants in the study.
KEY WORDS: Action research; Impact of COVID-19; Medically fragile families; Remote learning; Rural Manitoba
INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on schools, altered program delivery, and presented both opportunities and challenges for educational researchers. In Manitoba, schools initially closed for two weeks in March of 2020, and then shifted to emergency remote learning from April until the end of the 2020 academic year. As Manitoba schools resumed in-person classes in September of that year, alternatives were necessary for those unable to return to face-to-face learning during the pandemic. Seven school divisions in Western Manitoba developed a remote learning program in order to support families that could not send their children back to classrooms. To be eligible for the program, each potential student required medical documentation that either they or a family member would be at risk if the child were to attend school in person. The coalition of these school
divisions, known as the Westman Consortia Partnership (WCP), sought to identify what beliefs, practices, and strategies were critical to this rural remote learning program. Using an action research (AR) methodology, the researchers designed a two-phase study which included online questionnaires (phase 1) and personal interviews (phase 2) with principals, curriculum consultants, teachers, parents, and students (K-8) involved with remote learning.
PARTICIPATORY PRACTICES
Participatory approaches were essential in this research in order to expand understandings about how different stakeholders came together as part of a remote learning program to assist medically fragile families as well as how to enact research that would attend to the fast-paced needs of an innovative and emergent program. It is paramount to note that the core principles of action research were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted some of the research processes. The literature reviewed to support the analysis of the collected data included: elements of participatory community-based research that could be implemented in an action plan, access of immunocompromised people to educational practices during COVID-19, and innovation in rural educational communities that could be enhanced by action research.
Participatory Community-Based Action Research
Community-based research has expanded views on how to approach local research problems and allow robust discussions that inform knowledge (Lam et al., 2021). Drawing from Eaton et al. (2018), community-based participatory research shares similar ground to action research. Eaton, et al. (2018) argue that community-based participatory research needs to be combined with action: “Action learning refers to a process of action and reflection to solve problems for individuals, teams, and organizations” (p. 140). Therefore, as observed in this study, researchers engaged with stakeholders in the remote learning program who needed support to maintain a cycle of acting, observing, and reflecting on past and present practices to improve future work.
Etmanski et al. (2014) state that community-based research “provides a feasible and long- standing framework for generating the kind of boundary-crossing knowledge and community organizing strategies necessary for addressing multifaceted issues” (p. 3). The community-based approach, although limited, emerged early on in the research, and its multidisciplinary approach to action informed the analysis of this study. That is, participatory community-based action research seemed to fit the urgency of community members that were medically unable to attend schools during the pandemic.
Educational Access of Immunocompromised Families
Immunocompromised families (those with a medical justification) had access to different educational programs adapted to attend to their needs. Whether families had previously partaken in face-to-face schooling or in hospital-based education programs, their realities shifted with the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes impacted socialization of children and adults in the most varied social aspects. Schools had to shut down and transition students and staff to emergent remote learning, and hospitals needed free beds to receive people
infected with an unknown virus. Thomeer et al. (2020) highlighted that the pandemic affected people unequally and immunocompromised families in rural Manitoba were among those who required an alternate plan.
Emergency remote learning in Manitoba lasted longer for medically fragile families whose children could not go back in-person in the Fall of 2020 when schools reopened. Schools' former curricula had to be redesigned and practices reinvented to remodel what education looked like prior to the pandemic (Dube, 2020; WCP, 2020). During COVID-19, inclusion in education meant providing technological and internet access to families, guaranteeing medically fragile students had an opportunity to continue with their studies, and enhancing individuals’ well-being and coping mechanisms (Manitoba Remote Learning Support Centre, 2021).
Innovation in Rural Communities and Educational Practices
Innovation in rural communities has been explored through different lenses in the past few years. In Manitoba, rural researchers have taken COVID-19 as an opportunity to broaden the understandings of initiatives, challenges, and successes of educational practices in different school divisions (Lam, 2020; Nantais et al, 2021; Smith & Moura, 2021a; 2021b; 2022a;
2022b). Initially, shifts in attitudes of schools’ staff were essential to address public health orders and preserve individuals’ safety in both in-person and online settings (Kirk &
Ofwomo, 2021; Lam, 2020; Smith & Moura, 2021a; 2021b). Especially in online contexts, local school boards were “responsive to the context, including knowledge about barriers such as infrastructure and access, and viewed their job as one of supporting the decisions from the field and equipping through access to training or funding for infrastructure”
(Nantais et al., 2021, p. 32).
Several educational initiatives relied on participatory-community and action research insights to investigate “actual practices and not abstract practices and learning about the real, material, concrete, and practices of particular people in particular places” (Dube, 2020, p. 141). These studies informed local strategies and characterized emerging ‘variations’ of responses and measures that could be expanded into different contexts (Somekh & Zeichner, 2009). The radical changes that arose because of the pandemic impacted educational practices in general, as much as they influenced researchers to adopt different strategies and be responsive to their study needs and goals, as seen below.
PANDEMIC PERSPECTIVES
It is important to highlight the core ideas of action research as a methodology while also using a framework that encompasses ongoing changes and experiences. Numerous researchers faced disruptions in qualitative research during COVID-19 (Kobakhidze et al., 2021; Lane et al., 2021), and accepting disruptions became part of the process of revisiting scholarly goals and methods.
Action Research Core Principles
Action research implies a “careful engagement of the researcher with acquiring information to have practical application in the solution of specific problems related to their work”
(Stringer, 2008, p. 3). Action research allows practitioners to revisit experiences, reflect, and plan accordingly to address any breaches in their practices. According to McNiff and Whitehead (2011), action research refers to the positionality of practitioners. That is, they learn to question their beliefs, evaluate their work, and challenge their practices.
An action research perspective takes into consideration one’s culture, position, and power (Ozano & Khatri, 2018), therefore enacting “systematic inquiry in ways that are: democratic;
participatory; empowering; and life-enhancing” (Stringer, 2008, p. 27). Action research is a liberating and flexible research methodology as practitioners conduct their own investigations that are designed reflexively by individuals or groups. Individual autonomy and collective agency can be enhanced through action research (McNiff & Whitehead, 2011).
In the case of this study, action research provided the flexibility to face the challenges of a world-wide pandemic.
Disruption in Qualitative Research
Disruption can be the result of different unpredictable events (e.g., weather, health). During the COVID-19 pandemic, disruption has been more accentuated and “researchers have had to make tough choices over whether to redesign their research altogether, postpone data collection until an unknown time in the unforeseeable future, or use online methods to adapt to the changing environment” (Kobakhidze et al., 2021, p. 1). Just as the WCP was navigating ongoing changes in their remote learning program, researchers also had to adjust to new research protocols that follow health orders and consider everyone’s safety during uncertain times (Rashid & Yadav, 2020).
With the transition to remote practices, researchers had to rethink participants’ access to information about a study, revisit ethical considerations, establish new participant recruitment strategies, and reassess data collection processes and validation tactics (Coleman et al, 2020; Kobakhidze et al, 2021; Lane et al., 2021; Newman et al., 2021). For example, in this study, researchers considered whether participants had reliable internet plans and technological skills to be taking part in online surveys. When considering participants’ and researchers’ communication skills, different groups could interpret participant consent differently. Therefore, ethical issues should be raised to guarantee participants are well informed about a study when they receive information about it virtually.
Participant recruitment has been greatly impacted by the pandemic (Coleman et al, 2020).
The overwhelming and busy schedules of participants during COVID-19 (e.g., remote home office; supporting children in remote learning) were a drawback to be considered because for some, participation in a study could contribute to overloading their time. Consequently, the expectations of participant participation could require reducing numbers of interviews, cutting back in research phases, or smaller numbers of participants (Kobakhidze et al, 2021).
These considerations were critical in this action research study because of the implications on the research plan from such disruptions. COVID-19 became an important aspect that redefined both action research as a cyclic process and rural remote learning contexts.
Action research was chosen for its ability to be responsive, reciprocal, and collaborative (Stringer, 2014). As we navigated the pandemic personally and collectively, it was clear that conditions were ever-changing. Organizers of the rural remote learning program openly stated that they were “building the ship as they sail it” (Remote Learning Guidelines, 2020), so action research seemed an appropriate choice. Ideally, action research would offer researchers the tools to navigate changes in the field and ensure the research findings would be relevant and impactful. To some extent that was our experience, although at the pre-, peri- and post-research phases, we encountered opportunities enabled by the methodology and challenges that were difficult to overcome. Navigating the tensions between efficiency and community consultation was difficult during the pandemic (Briscoe et al., 2022; Milner et al., 2021; Tamtik & Darazsi, 2022). In this study, administrators and researchers were on opposite sides of this challenge. The WCP administrators required efficient and timely decision-making, while the researchers required more time than anticipated to gather the community’s input. This article describes each phase of the research process and identifies the opportunities and challenges we faced as action researchers navigating ever-changing and unpredictable conditions in the local context.
PRE-RESEARCH CONTEXT
The pre-research phase stretched from initial contact and request for research assistance until the start of data collection. Three essential facets of the pre-research context were the research problem and purpose, the people involved, and the partnerships and personnel required to conduct the research.
Problem and Purpose
A group of southwestern Manitoba superintendents with existing relationships and past experience collaborating pooled their resources to create the rural remote learning program.
Their intent was to offer a completely online education for students who could not attend school in person within any of the six, and later seven, participating school divisions. Only one of the divisions (Brandon School Division) is urban, and it is surrounded by the other six prairie school divisions that reach east to Brandon, west to the Saskatchewan border, south to near the U.S. border, and north past Riding Mountain National Park to Dauphin and Swan River. The problem facing the WCP was how to organize a rural remote learning program given the scarcity of resources to use and the shortage of time for planning and preparation.
With no known model to use as a template, the rural remote learning program was established on a foundation of principles that would guide how people from different divisions would interact with one another and establish roles for various stakeholders. The Remote Learning Guidelines (Westman Consortia Partnership, 2020) outlined the agreed upon expectations for the program’s operation. While this organizational framework continued to be in effect throughout the operation of the program, it lacked specific pedagogical principles that would guide online learning. Aware that the fresh innovation
would inevitably undergo shifts and changes, organizers knew they were exploring new territory. Thinking forward to life after the pandemic, organizers engaged researchers to study their innovation to see what could be gleaned from the experience.
People
Moving from the initial idea to an actual research study was the result of trusting relationships between critical players on the local scene. The southwestern superintendents’
group met monthly to discuss shared concerns and innovate or collaborate where there were mutual benefits. That group invited the Director of Brandon University’s Centre for Aboriginal and Rural Studies in Education (BU CARES) to join their monthly meetings. BU CARES Director, Michelle Lam, reported on current happenings at BU CARES, a community- based research centre situated within the Faculty of Education at Brandon University which aimed to match faculty researchers with community needs around Indigenous and rural education. The superintendents described current undertakings in their divisions which could benefit from locally conducted research. This study arose out of such a discussion.
Once the need for a research study was identified, Lam then approached Smith to see if she was interested in doing the research and arranged joint meetings to discuss a potential matching of skills and needs. Similarly, Lam had regular conversations with Tech Manitoba, a provincial organization interested in developing the capacity of educators with technology.
Tech MB was looking to expand their programming into rural communities and this project seemed like a good fit. Once again collaborative discussions facilitated by Lam developed productive relationships.
The Brandon University Research Ethics Committee (BUREC) application proposed a three- phase action research study that would include questionnaires, focus groups and interviews.
As evidence of the collaborative and supportive approach of the southwestern superintendents, a letter of support was signed by all seven divisions agreeing to have the Brandon School Division (BSD) take the lead in correspondence and affirming that each division’s signatory would ensure ethical protocols for research were followed in their division. This offered an effective solution to conducting research in seven different school divisions simultaneously. Ethical approval was confirmed December 1, 2020, enabling the study to begin.
Partnerships and Personnel
The partnership between Brandon University faculty members, BU CARES, WCP and Tech Manitoba, led to identifying a researcher (Smith), a funder (Tech MB), a lead contact for southwest superintendents (Gustafson), plus a logistics coordinator and consultant (Lam).
With funding and an approved research study in place, Smith was able to recruit and hire an experienced research assistant, Moura, a PhD candidate at University of Manitoba in Curriculum Studies with experience in action research, qualitative research, and online learning. From that point on there were two researchers.
Similarly, we were able to access logistical support through BU CARES, such as joining a group license for Survey Monkey to develop our online questionnaire, which reduced our costs. Existing relationships of trust between the southwest superintendents and BU CARES initially made it easy for the researchers to connect with the WCP Steering Committee to request input and feedback. Identifying one central contact person streamlined communication between the researchers and the school divisions.
Opportunities and Challenges During the Pre-Research Context
Within the pre-research phase, we encountered opportunities and challenges in all three previously described areas: problem or purpose, people, and partnerships and personnel.
Problem
The collective multi-division solution to a shared problem presented an opportunity for this research to come into existence. At the time the researchers were invited to the table, the program had been established, the guiding framework had been agreed upon, and a research question had been identified. The geographical proximity of the seven divisions made for a shared understanding of the rural communities in which most students and teachers in the program lived and worked. What was more challenging was that the structure of WCP was somewhat loose. We had one contact person who relayed messages to the advisory committee and facilitated communication with participants. The WCP program itself had no designated administrator, so parents, teachers, principals, and students encountered communication issues as they did not have one designated contact person responsible for the program. All divisional program contacts were overloaded as responsibilities to the program were added to their already demanding workloads. The program was not first priority for any of the program leads. Given the ever-changing conditions during the pandemic, for the program and beyond, this was problematic. It was not a quick ship to steer as seven divisions had to agree on decisions before changes could be made. In the early days, decisions were made on an hourly basis and not always consistently, due to tight timelines that limited consultation.
People
The relationships between the southwestern superintendents, BU CARES, Tech MB, and the researchers were based on trust. The divisions had prior positive experiences with BU CARES, as did Tech MB, so were confident that the new partnership would allow them to meet the needs of their community-based organizations. The researchers likewise turned to BU CARES for help with logistics, connections, and relationship building. White and Downey (2021) propose people, power, and place, as essential aspects of rural education innovation, and those three elements contributed to bringing the program and research to reality.
Personal relationships were exemplified during the ethical approval process when the letter of support signed by seven division superintendents was produced in one day. Nevertheless, the constant state of change made it difficult to navigate. For those in the program, there was a need to navigate different divisional cultures. Some of the larger divisions contributed teachers and curriculum consultants, while smaller divisions contributed financially. Ways of doing business, hierarchical relationships, and even vocabulary differed between
divisions and those employed in and supporting the program had to learn to navigate those nuances. Examples included whether remote learning teachers would be expected to respond to school-based emails (no), join divisional PD sessions (yes), and contribute to student transition meetings in the spring (some yes and some no depending on their home division). The nuances of the different approaches emerged over time as assumptions were uncovered. Divisions are of unequal size, so it was important to balance the voices of the different partners. As in many rural endeavors, challenges included distance, communication, and access to reliable digital services.
Partnership
The partnership between the school divisions, Tech MB, BU CARES and the researchers, effectively provided the structure for hiring an experienced RA. Timing was impacted negatively, however, by the timelines imposed by the university. Drafting a posting for the RA position required consultation with multiple offices, getting the posting approved for distribution required different approvals, and the timelines imposed by the university calendar meant that Moura was not hired until January 2021. This slowed down the intended timeline of giving feedback rapidly to the program. Additional delays occurred as the researchers prepared the questionnaire on Survey Monkey and distributed the recruitment information to the potential partners. Mailing lists needed to be created with separate distribution lists for each participant group’s questionnaire (students, parents, teachers, principals, curriculum consultants; note that students were contacted via their parents). It took multiple email requests to get sufficient participation at each step in the process. While frustrating, this was not surprising. At every step in the process, all those involved were impacted by the pandemic. Roles and responsibilities shifted frequently, positions changed, new personnel were hired, student numbers fluctuated, new mandates were issued by the province, and individuals worked from home, away from their usual clerical and logistical supports.
In this phase of the research, we had to accept that we were not in control of the pace of the study. We would have to adapt, respond, and bend with the flow. The school divisions also had to accept that they could not accelerate the speed of the research process. Stress was high in all contexts, and we were not going to be successful by applying increased pressure.
As researchers, this was difficult. We aimed to be responsive and flexible, yet we needed the fidelity of ethical practice and approvals for all research practices. Table 1 provides a synthesis of the opportunities and challenges experienced in the pre-research phase.
PERI-RESEARCH CONTEXT
The peri-research phase extended for a year from the start of data collection (February 2021) and included dissemination of findings in multiple formats (February 2022). Data collection required collaboration with our school division partners and everyone involved had their workload impacted by the pandemic. We were delayed in sharing our findings with the participating divisions and the larger community by pandemic-related factors.
Conditions in the province, the region, and the program shifted during that year, making it difficult to be as timely and responsive as desired in action research. During the peri-
research context, both our research practices and our public dissemination of findings were impacted by the pandemic.
Table 1
Pre-Research Context Opportunities and Challenges of Action Research Methodology Sub-contexts Opportunities Challenges
Problem Collective/multi-division problem solution (program) created and research question identified;
geographically concentrated.
Emergent loose structure for WCP; no designated administrator; 7 different divisions having to agree, tight timelines; change in context.
People Trusting existing relationships;
community-based research centre (BU CARES); meeting needs of community organizations (Tech MB and school divisions); rural innovation.
Ethics – letter of support, one contact person, local ethical permissions secured by each division.
Constant state of change; different organizational cultures (e.g., divisions);
uneven division sizes and contributions (some contributed money, others staff);
distance, connection, and access.
Partnership Funding to hire experienced RA;
shared expenses through BU CARES; opportunity to access WCP steering committee; centralized contact person.
Timelines at university (e.g., hiring process, holiday); overwhelming role changes aggravated by the pandemic.
Practices
Two phases of data collection, questionnaires, and interviews were facilitated with the assistance of the BSD, which created list-serves for each category of participants and distributed all email communications. Multiple recruitment calls were distributed to ensure we recruited sufficient participants. The calls were sent at weekly intervals to be sensitive to feelings of overload for all concerned, thus extending the data collection process. Table 2 shows the numbers of potential participants and of research participants per stakeholder group in each phase of the research.
Phase one questionnaires were designed to investigate attitudes, experiences, and suggestions from each group of participants. Table 3 summarizes the topics included in the questionnaires for the different participant groups. Some topics were approached from multiple perspectives (learning environment, pedagogy, attitudes, strategies, comparisons, and suggestions), some were posed to adults only (program involvement and sustainability), and some were specific to one group (technology, time and feedback were posed only to parents). Phase one analysis generated specific topics for questions to be posed in phase two interviews (see Table 4), which were much more streamlined and specific to the groups.
Table 2
Potential and Actual Research Participants per Stakeholder Group and Research Phase Participant Groups Potential participants Participants
Phase 1 Phase 2
Students (K-8) 181 21 1
Parents Minimum 1 per student 38 3
Teachers 11 6 4
Curriculum consultants
5 3 1
Principals 39 20 1
Total 236+ 88 10
Participation (%) ≈ 37.3% ≈4.3%
Table 3
Phase One Question Topics per Participant Group Questionnaire
Themes Students Teachers Parents Curriculum
Consultants Principals K-4 5-8 FI
Learning
environment X X X X X
Pedagogy X X X X X X
Curricular
content X X X X
Attitudes X X X X X X X
Strategies X X X X X X
Language
learning X X X
Language
strategies X X X
Technology X
Time X
Student
feedback X
Comparisons to in-person learning
X X X X X X
Program involvement
X X X
Sustainability X X X
Suggestions X X X X X X X
Table 4
Phase Two Interview themes per Participant Group Interview
Themes Students Teachers Parents Curriculum
Consultants Principals Learning
environment X
Pedagogy X X X X X
Communication X X X
Student connections
X
Child X
Parental Role X
Teacher Support X
Friday meetings X
Consultant learning
X French
Immersion X
Technology X
Expectations/
Roles X
Collaborative analysis of phase one data generated four themes; Figure 1 presents a synthesis of these findings. Based on our exploration of the four themes identified, we generated recommendations for the program at the end of phase one (see Figure 2) and presented these as part of our Interim Report. This signified the first foray into the public dissemination of our findings whilst still engaged in data collection and analysis.
Figure 1. Four Themes Representing the Findings from Data Analysis.
Public Dissemination
As mentioned above, our first public dissemination of findings took place during phase one data analysis. We presented our emerging insights and methodology at the International Congress on Rural Education in March 2021, which allowed us to share our initial thoughts about what we were learning with fellow rural educators. In May, 2021 we presented our Interim report to the Advisory Committee of WCP and had an opportunity for conversation.
Ideally this would have been a time to solicit questions they would like to see answered through the interviews. However, due to time pressures, the phase two ethics approval and recruitment was underway, so the interview protocols were generated by the researchers without input from the advisory committee. Also undercutting this opportunity for discussion of the interim report was the news that the WCP rural remote learning program had notified parents they intended to wrap up at the end of that school year. As researchers, we were not informed of this decision by the Consortia and only heard about it incidentally from program participants. Naturally the scheduled dismantling of the program weakened the consortia’s interest in our recommendations for the program. At that point, our attitude shifted from learning how to strengthen the program to discerning what could be learned from the innovation to inform future practice (Lane et al., 2021).
A third opportunity for dissemination of phase one findings was through writing an article for a Brazilian journal, which focused on understanding the impact of innovative rural initiatives and aspects of inclusion (e.g., tech access, attending medically fragile families, educational access) in Western Manitoba (Moura & Smith, 2021). Our fourth opportunity for dissemination of our findings while still in the process of data analysis was to submit a proposal for the 2021 Canadian Association for Teacher Education (CATE) working conference on the theme of Online Learning and Teaching from Kindergarten to Graduate School. We submitted a proposal in July, attended the working conference in October, and
Figure 2. Overall Recommendations for Rural Remote Learning Presented by Theme.
(Note: Italicized text signifies recommendations suggested by parents in their questionnaire responses.)
submitted our draft chapter for peer review February 1, 2022. Each step in this Working Conference process (Becker, 2021) provided opportunities to articulate our process, share insights and test out conclusions in a community of critical friends. We had an opportunity to meet virtually with other Canadian scholars interested in rural remote learning, as a direct result of connections made at the working conference. This conversation once again raised new questions.
As we reached the conclusion of our research, we wrote the final report and benefitted from other opportunities to share our findings. Brandon University (BU) is a rural university committed to making research accessible to a wide variety of audiences. Through BU, we were able to record a podcast (BU CARES, 2021) with the hosts and one of the teachers in the program, plus publish a two-page Research Connection article about the research (Smith
& Moura, 2022a). BU CARES posted our interim and final report on their website which also makes the findings accessible to a broad audience (Smith & Moura, 2021a; 2021b).
This process of going back and forth from analysis to writing and dissemination enabled us to add layers to our analysis. In responding to feedback from our working conference colleagues, we sought out a framework to use in our work. Eventually we settled on two informative frameworks, and in our CATE chapter, proposed our own framework for rural remote learning. This framework, the Rural Remote Learning Framework (Smith & Moura, 2022b) synthesized the Novel Remote Learning Framework (Almutairi et al., 2021, p. 129) and the Keys to Rural Innovation: Place, People and Power framework (White & Downey, 2021), with our research findings. We hoped our framework would be a contribution to others active in these fields of research as well as practitioners involved with offering remote learning options. As with other phases of the research process, the peri-research phase was also impacted by both opportunities and challenges.
Opportunities and Challenges in the Peri-Research Context
As researchers, we benefitted from the support and assistance of the Brandon School Division (for email distribution and communication) and BU CARES (Survey Monkey) during the peri-research phase. We found challenges in collecting data as there was a high rate of exhaustion among potential participants and a saturation of pandemic related tasks. As researchers we were impacted as well, and it took us longer than usual to complete the data analysis and writing. Knowing the program had been terminated made it difficult to feel a sense of urgency to complete the research. The consultative role of the Advisory Committee essentially disappeared with the program being discontinued. In essence, it had come into existence in response to a local problem and ceased to exist as that problem disappeared.
Most of the families decided to send their children to one of two locations for the 2021-2022 school year. Either their children returned to their local school, which by that time was considered safer due to higher levels of vaccinations; or they registered their children for the provincial online learning program (Manitoba Remote Learning Support Centre: About Us), which had started in January of 2021.
During the public dissemination of the research, we benefitted from the multiple formats for distribution outlined previously. Each level of dissemination brought new opportunities for dialogue, reflection and identification of new questions that informed our work. Our interim and final reports were submitted much later than anticipated due to delays in all phases of the research and a decreased sense of urgency. Action research afforded us opportunities to learn throughout the research process, to go public with emerging findings, and to have our work informed by numerous colleagues. Table 5 synthesizes the opportunities and challenges experienced through the peri-research phase of the research.
Table 5
Peri-Research Context Opportunities and Challenges of Action Research Methodology Sub-Contexts Opportunities Challenges
Practices Support of BSD; BSD access to list-servs of participants;
persistence (e.g., sending constant reminders).
Slow participation response; burnout – exhaustion, time, stress; time to analyse collected data; consultative process with WCP steering committee.
Public Multiple formats (e.g., podcast, research connection, reports, presentations, and book chapters); disseminating knowledge during different AR cycles; collegial
conversations to get a sense of the research outcomes.
Reports were later than expected; provincial remote learning program impacted decisions made about the program; multiple demands.
POST-MORTEM RESEARCH CONTEXT
In this area of the research, we analyze the methodological assumptions and the reality of conducting action research during the pandemic. We explore how ever-changing conditions shifted stakeholders’ roles (e.g., people being assigned new positions within the on-going program), overwhelmed all individuals involved in this study (including potential participants), and affected these research methods. We discuss the implications of emergent and flexible actions towards a new praxis as action research does have the potential to address real life situations and be sensitive to community’s and researchers’ needs.
Nonetheless, the conditions of COVID-19 in the 2020-2021 school year offered impediments to answers that needed to be found more quickly and effectively. We understand the potentialities of relearning and readapting action research based on the pandemic context, but there ought to be lessons learned from this experience that will affect researchers in future studies (Lane et al., 2021), as seen below.
Praxis
Praxis can have several definitions, but in this paper, we situate it as “the interdependence and integration—not separation—of theory and practice, research and development, thought and action” (Zuber-Skerritt, 2010, p. 15). The COVID-19 pandemic, in the form of disruption (Kobakhidze et al, 2021), implied that rather than developing action research for its own theoretical sake, we ought to understand and consider the historical impacts of a study. That is, action researchers must see relatability within their research goals and “what happens in some particular place and time as a result of the action research” that they developed (Kemmis, 2010b, p. 425).
The Rural Remote Learning Program, in all its capacities, urged action researchers to rethink educational and research debates that still enhance and promote technical discourses.
Technicality and procedures should facilitate the connection of researchers to their communities, and not distance them even more (Conquergood & Johnson, 2013; Kemmis, 2010a). To problematize praxis within a pandemic context, we explore opportunities and challenges faced by researchers trying to find closure for their study.
Opportunities and Challenges in the Post-Mortem Research Context
The Rural Remote Learning Program in Western Manitoba came with several unseen opportunities and challenges for the different stakeholders (see Table 6). Flexibility, time- efficiency, communication, problem-solving, and collaboration between university, school divisions, and WCP, were among some of the opportunities that enabled this study to run as smoothly as it could in a pandemic context. The reality of COVID-19 brought uncertainties to families, students, teachers, as well as the rural remote learning staff, and emergent concerns arose while the program was still being developed.
This action research study was able to document an innovative remote learning program that considered place (White & Downey, 2021) as fundamental to being responsive to the community’s needs. Consequently, the participation of the different stakeholders was important in order to examine different experiences and reflect on the program through a multi-faceted lens. The WCP and school divisions found themselves overwhelmed with the ongoing changes in different programs, therefore the researchers’ role in conducting the research in partnership with them was pivotal to establish the strengths and gaps of a program that could potentially grow and reach more people. Later in 2021, after the announcement that the Rural Remote Learning had come to an end, the role of the Manitoba provincial government became more evident with its new Provincial Remote Learning Program. The province managed to take on the responsibility to attend to those who continued to need remote learning for the 2021-2022 school year.
The Rural Remote Learning Program informed current provincial government and practitioners’ praxis and will continue to assist future ones. With that in mind, we explore some of the challenges that can impact future research studies dealing with the present programs, especially those with a focus on action research. Firstly, despite the flexible nature of action research to centre study questions on timely demands, the context of COVID-19
made it difficult for researchers to keep up with the constant changes and communication within the WCP. For example, staff members were relocated to different functions and their participation in the study was compromised given their new tasks demanded the extra time they might have used to share their experiences with us.
Although WCP was effectively and efficiently assisting families and staff in the Rural Remote Learning Program, our communication with them did not follow those same features. As researchers, during the time we were performing different research steps (e.g., coding, analyzing, writing interim reports, presenting our data), the program administration already had different priorities and commitments. Later, even the announcement of the end of the program came as a surprise, which indicated researchers and program administration needed more opportunities for conversations about the next steps of the program.
Understandably, the program administrators needed to make decisions quickly, however from a research lens, such steps cannot be skipped and performed as fast. The process of coding and analyzing, for instance, is what allows action researchers to define what the following cycles will look like. Hence, the lack of communication and different administrators’ and researchers’ expectations about the program worked as a disruption of what is considered standard for this type of research.
The changes to our action research plans (e.g., not conducting focus groups with participants) led us to question who would benefit from this research. As we saw the context of the pandemic evolving with the increased number of vaccinated people, the return to in- person classes, and the provincial take-over of a more robust remote learning program, we also wondered how this study could be expanded into different contexts other than a pandemic context. The original action research plan had to be reconfigured and rather than providing recommendations for future actions, we found ourselves salvaging the learning lessons of a program that had already ended.
Table 6
Research Post-Mortem Opportunities and Challenges of Action Research Methodology Context Opportunities Challenges
Praxis Able to adapt (flexibility);
leave open-ended interview questions; time-efficient;
efficient communication tools (e.g., zoom).
Constant change; communication between WCP and researchers about next steps in the program.
Support of BU CARES director; distribution of messages through BSD email was efficient.
Different emergent priorities; time and commitment pressures; limited contact through emails; divisional leaders and teachers under constant pressure; lack of time and opportunities for conversations.
Problem has been solved;
provincial remote learning program can meet the needs of those who continued to need remote learning;
lessons learned can be applied in other contexts.
Who will benefit from the research (e.g., contexts other than a pandemic?); evolving nature of the pandemic; poor communication between WCP and researchers about
program changes.
Researchers supported the school division at a difficult time by conducting the study; documented an emergent innovative rural program.
Persisting once the need is gone; trying to salvage the learning from a program that has ended; abrupt ending and the breaking of an AR cycle; lack of closure.
When looking back at the research praxis, one important learning opportunity we take from this study is “action and practice likewise escape our control” (Kemmis, 2010, p. 12).
Moreover, with a praxis research perspective, according to Kemmis (2010), researchers’ and the community’s “[…] standpoints and their interpretive horizons […] do not fuse in a common intersubjective space. The quality of the science is still to be judged by the academy;
the quality of the practice or action is still to be judged in the organization or community” (p.
14). The COVID-19 pandemic indeed impacted the redirection of researchers’ analysis and goals in attempt to find closure for this process.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:
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Dr. Cathryn Smith is an associate professor, in the Department of Leadership and Educational Administration, and Chair of Graduate Programs, in Brandon University’s Faculty of Education. She completed her PhD at University of Manitoba and continues to be interested in teacher leadership, action research, reflective practice, leadership development and rural education. Email ([email protected]), or direct mail inquiries to Cathryn Smith, Faculty of Education, 270-18th Street, Brandon, MB, R7A 6A9.
Dr. Gustavo Moura holds a PhD in Education from the University of Manitoba. Aside from working with educational action research, his emergent scholarly interests include English language teacher education; intercultural teacher development; LGBTQ+ teacher identity;
globalization, digital culture and technologies in education; and decolonial and intersectional research. Email [email protected] for any inquiries.
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